The Keyhole makes observations about consumers, brands, ads, & marketing, through a predictive customer loyalty lens. Most marketing is ineffective to today's bionic consumer, given undifferentiated products, loss of "brandness," & hard to come by profits. Marketers talk about "engagement" but nobody seems to be doing a very good job measuring or integrating it into what they do & it shows! The Keyhole opens a dialogue on this subject & suggests real-world solutions with the marketing community.

Monday, February 29, 2016

The nice thing about predictive engagement metrics
is, well, they predict. And to be sure, sometimes it takes time for the real
world to catch up with engagement values, which are emotionally based and often
unarticulated. For instance, while it may seem so intuitively obvious now, a
decade ago one of the trends we advised brands to attend to was one related to
the coming explosion of mobile advertising. It seems to have paid off for
brands that planned for it.

For example, Facebook posted more than $1 billion in quarterly
profits recently with mobile ads accounting for 80% of the social networking
brand’s 4th Quarter ad revenue. To put that into perspective, that’s four times
what it was in 2012, or $1 for each of
the 1.23 billion highly engaged, monthly active users, aka “MAUs”. Think of it
of social networking’s version of retail’s same-store sales – with the same
relationship to profitability – if it’s done well.

Facebook shows up #1 on our Customer Loyalty Engagement Index for
social networking – as well they should. Loyalty and emotional engagement
metrics are leading-indicator predictors of consumer behavior. That means if
consumers are truly emotionally engaged, they’ll act positively toward you. In
this case, Facebook users did. To the tune of increased revenues (+52%) bringing
the grand total to $5.85 billion. All well and good for Facebook, but does the
promise emotional brand engagement makes deliver for other brands?

YouTube, #2 on the list, attracts more than a billion users a month,
almost one third of everyone on the Internet. Twitter tied with YouTube with
310 million MAU. Pinterest, #3, has 100 million users each month, although not
everybody feels the need to pin something. Still they show up! LinkedIn was #4.
They have about 450 million members, but they only average 100 million active
users per month, and when we speak of real ”brand engagement” we’re talking about
a behavioral measure, something that will correlate with consumers acting
positively toward a brand. Reddit, #5, lists 234 million visitors accessed the
site. Seven other brands are included in the Social Networking Sites category.

The CLEI brand lists aren’t pre-determined. Consumers tell Brand
Keys researchers which brands they actually use in a category and the brands
must be mentioned enough times to provide a statistically generalizable sample.
And speaking of “statistically generalizable,” the correlation between our
Customer Loyalty Engagement Index rankings (1 to 10 in these particular categories,
accounting for ties) and monthly active users is 0.85. You can check that on
the statistical app on your own mobile device, but possessing predictive
insights like that emotional engagement can provide can help any brand plan for
profitability.

Find out more about what makes customer loyalty happen and how Brand Keys metrics is able to predict future consumer behavior: brandkeys.com. Visit our YouTube channel to learn more about Brand Keys methodology, applications and case studies.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Brand Keys has done a lot of political engagement metrics
over the years, mostly for Presidential elections and just like the Father of
Our Country, real engagement measures cannot tell a lie. At least when it comes
to predicting consumer behavior. In this specific case, the election booth, and
generally in the marketplace.

Last June, when real estate tycoon, reality TV star, human
brand, and hair icon, Donald Trump, officially launched his campaign for President
of the United States a lot of you thought, ”He’s got to be kidding.” OK, you
weren’t alone. But we conducted an emotional engagement poll of our own and –
as is usually the case with engagement metrics – it gave us a predictive read
on the outcome. An 84% approval rating among Republicans, which is proving out
in the real world.

Anyway, it’s Oscar time again, but we’re not going step into
that particular political arena where you can’t have missed that accusations have
been made that the Oscars are only looking to celebrate the whitest of its
content, creators, and artistes with zero out of 20 nominations going to
non-white actors. The only celebrities-of-color onstage will be award
presenters and that has some folks up in arms.

We can’t offer you any odds on how that’s going to effect
future Academy Award nominations or elections or advertiser and viewer
engagement, but just like last year we've offered up some engagement-based odds on who’ll
win the Academy Awards in the “big” categories – based upon our predictive
engagement assessments. We did really well last year. Please note we provide
these for entertainment value only. If you’re looking to engage in some
moneymaking outcomes, you’re on your own, although it’s generally a bad idea to
bet against emotional engagement in any category. Anyway, here’s this year’s engagement
odds:

The 2016 Academy Awards will air Sunday, February 28, 2016
on ABC, those were the emotional engagement odds for each of the key categories,
and we wish all the nominees and viewers all the best.

For the advertisers who paid a reported $1.8 – 2.2 million
per thirty-second commercial, we calculate the odds of advertising engagement
success to be about 8 to 1 given past performance statistics and the current
list of sponsors, so it might be worth remembering the words of Walt Disney,
who noted, “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make movies.”

Find out more about what makes customer loyalty happen and how Brand Keys metrics is able to predict future consumer behavior: brandkeys.com. Visit our YouTube channel to learn more about Brand Keys methodology, applications and case studies.

Rational stuff is price-of-entry, and emotional values are
more problematic for brands. It’s not the brand outreach or messaging. That’s
the easy part. How to accurately identify which emotional values a brand should
leverage, that’s an entirely different challenge. Imagery and – what many
marketers mistake for engagement – are so vastly different from real emotional
engagement, it’s not only hard to describe, it’s really not funny!

So seriously, for 2016 we interviewed 42,792 consumers (18
to 65) from the nine US Census Regions, and they self-selected categories in
which they are consumers, and the brands for which they are top-20% customers.
Seventy percent were interviewed by phone, 25% percent via face-to-face
interviews (We did that so we didn’t exclude cellphone-only households. Bragging
Rights: we were the first research company to do that back in 2007 when that
group was less than 5% of the population. How times have changed. Along with
consumer and category values!), and 5% online to backfill category and brand
quotas. This year, the 10 categories with the highest expectations for
emotional values (in parentheses) – and the brands consumers assessed as best
meeting those values – included the following:

What were those brands’ secrets? Well, primarily they
recognize the fact that marketers who can increase brand engagement levels always
see positive consumer behavior in the marketplace. Always. But to succeed at
that, marketers need to accurately answer these three questions:

1) What drives my category,

2) What are the emotional engagement values I need to focus
on, and

3) How can my brand exceed consumer expectations for those values?

“Easy peasy,” you say? Alas, most brands can’t. The real
marketplace proves it. Eighty-three (83) new brands showed up in the survey
year. That nearly 14% new brands that consumers are using at statistically
generalizable rates. An increased number of brands appearing in consumers’
consideration sets confirm category volatility. And brands that aren’t emotionally
engaging consumers are going to face a whole new competitive set. When
consumers mention new brands at significant levels, it’s an indicator that
current options are not meeting their expectations. When that happens,
consumers look to new brands to do that. You really don't want that to happen
to you.

Methodology

Brand Keys uses independently validated research that fuses
emotional and rational aspects of individual categories. The technique is a
combination of psychological inquiry and higher-order statistical analyses, has
a test/re-test reliability of 0.93, and provides results generalizable at the
95% confidence level. It has been successfully used in B2B and B2C categories
in 35 countries. Oh, and they’ve been independently validated to correlate
very, very highly with positive consumer behavior and, axiomatically, sales and
profitability.

The output identifies 4 behavioral drivers for the
category-specific ‘Ideal,’ and the emotional and rational values (and their
percent-contribution to engagement) that form the components of each driver.
Drivers – and component values – are category-specific since consumers don’t
buy smartphones the same way they buy cosmetics or pizza. Our assessments
measure how well brands meet expectations that consumers hold for each driver in
their categories.

Find out more about what makes customer loyalty happen and how Brand Keys metrics is able to predict future consumer behavior: brandkeys.com. Visit our YouTube channel to learn more about Brand Keys methodology, applications and case studies.

Thursday, February 04, 2016

Only 39% of Super Bowl 50’s advertisers will score big on
their really big investments. In this case, “scoring” refers to generating
consumer behavior. In the marketplace. You know, sales. Consumer traffic. Brand
profits. That kind of stuff, advertising being a business and not a hobby after
all.

When it comes to Super Bowl ad playbooks, brands look to
score big in five ways: 1) big audiences, 2) big creative, 3) big buzz, 4) big
social networking, and 5) big levels of emotional brand engagement. That last
one is most important because it’s a leading-indicator of consumer behavior in
the only arena that counts – the real world marketplace.

Last year nearly 115 million viewers watched the Super Bowl,
many for the ads alone, making it the most-watched show in U.S. history, so the
need to level the ad playing field has not been lost on marketers. Every year
brands start earlier to create up-front buzz sneak-previewing ads and
hashtagging everything in sight. And sure, brands need to entertain if they
want their ads “to trend,” but if advertisers want real ROI, entertainment
alone is not enough.

Consumers need to be emotionally engaged with the ads so
they come away feeling the brand better meets the expectations they hold for
the category Ideal. Puppies are cute and all, but the ultimate question is what
did it do for the Budweiser brand? Beyond collecting all those shares, likes,
and tweets. Which do correlate with “entertainment” but not so much with sales.

So our approach is a bit more precise than counting likes or
interpreting MRI images. Mobile software developed to mine social data streams is
overlaid with validated emotional brand engagement assessments to identify the
intersection of engagement and entertainment within the context of the Super
Bowl. The output allows us to calculate whether a brand’s ad will engage and
entertain, entertain only, engage but not entertain, or neither engage nor entertain.
Like all things “marketing,” each variable results in a different outcome for
the brand. For the map of this year’s results, click here.

The bottom line? Only13 of the 33 brands (or 39%, significantly
lower than the 13-year historical average of 49%) included in this year’s
survey were assessed by consumers as both engaging and entertaining. Those
included:

Amazon Echo

Butterfinger

Doritos

Hyundai

Kia

Mountain Dew

PayPal

Pokémon

Skittles

Snickers

Taco Bell

Toyota

WeatherTech

Brands assessed to be highly entertaining but with modest to
low engagement included virtually all of the beverage brands:

Bud Light

Budweiser

Coca-Cola

Michelob

Pepsi

Shock Top

Look, we understand that agencies and marketers hope their
ads will entertain. That’s a dimension that’s easy to measure. And unquestionably
advertising entertainment and social networking reviews generate lots of
chatter, traditional and digital. So there you are. You managed to entertain
115 million viewers. But these days that’s not enough. Or shouldn’t be.

With 30-second spots selling for $5 million plus, marketers
need a new game plan when it comes to assessing advertising ROI. A laugh, a
sigh, or a tweet alone isn’t really an acceptable return on budgets this big. Advertising
should be judged not by entertainment ratings or social networking trend metrics
alone, but how it ultimately helps the brand perform in the marketplace. Does
the ad engage and build the brand’s equity? Does it drive brand share, consumer
behavior, and sales? If so, you’ll score positive bottom line impact, even if
the advertising wasn’t as entertaining as envisioned. A brand that can both
engage and entertain is usually a Super Bowl winner.

But on this particular Sunday, when a brand gets into
people’s living rooms or on their computers or mobile screens, it doesn’t
matter how many consumers tweet, like, or share the ad if it doesn’t increase emotional
brand engagement. Otherwise what you’ve produced is a very short, very
expensive movie!”

Given that this is the Super Bowl we’re talking about, we’ll
close with our annual thought that might be worth for advertisers to remember:
There is no “I” in “team,” but there sure is one in “Return-On-Investment.”

Find out more about what makes customer loyalty happen and how Brand Keys metrics is able to predict future consumer behavior: brandkeys.com. Visit our YouTube channel to learn more about Brand Keys methodology, applications and case studies.

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About Us

Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys, is a sought-after speaker and global thought leader on engagement and loyalty. He has pioneered work in these areas, creating the Customer Loyalty Engagement Index and the Sports Fan Loyalty Index. New York University’s communication school has declared Dr. Passikoff “the most-quoted brand consultant in the United States.”